The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  ‘You must let the music breathe more. You should linger over these phrases, Fräulein Whittaker…’ He points to the page. ‘You should hold onto the music as though you can’t bear to let go.’

  We work on the phrasing. I concentrate hard.

  You can hear the sound of the great army convoy from here, but only faintly. You feel it rather than hear it; it’s more a vibration than a sound, like the drone of some vast insect. Here in the tranquillity and cloistered peace of this room, you could almost imagine that nothing had happened to Vienna: that Hitler’s vast war machine wasn’t surging through the streets, just a couple of minutes’ walk from here. I wonder how aware Dr Zaslavsky is of what’s happening. There are no newspapers or journals that I can see in his flat, nothing to hint at the fever and chaos in the city outside, at the great events that shake the world.

  I play the Impromptu in A flat. My right hand is muddy, he tells me.

  ‘This music must sparkle like water,’ he says. ‘It must be clean and clear. It must seem effortless, Fräulein Whittaker. And the pedalling must be crisper.’

  I play the first few lines over and over, till he is satisfied.

  A clock on the mantelpiece chimes eleven. I expect the lesson to finish now – my lessons always last for one hour. But he doesn’t seem to notice.

  I play the F minor Fantaisie.

  ‘We have talked about this before,’ he says. ‘You need more of a sense of structure. To have a sense of the architecture of the piece, to feel it. Do you remember, when we talked about this?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  I think about what he told me: The piece must feel like a whole, so the ending will come at just the right time. But I’ve never entirely understood how to show this in the playing.

  He asks for the Mazurka in A minor.

  ‘Remember, technically this may be quite simple, but emotionally it is very complex,’ he says.

  I play. He frowns a little.

  ‘The Mazurkas are full of yearning,’ he says. ‘Of homesickness. And strangeness – such strange harmonies. These harmonies seem shockingly modern to us. Here the composer was long before his time. This is Chopin’s simplest music, but also perhaps his finest … You have to feel it in yourself, the longing…’

  I play the piece again. I feel all the yearning in me. I play well, very well. It’s one of those moments that any musician lives for – when the music takes flight, when a single phrase of music seems to say all that need ever be said.

  Afterwards, he is quiet for a long moment. Then he clears his throat.

  ‘That is good,’ he says then. ‘Very good.’

  I wait, expecting some qualification.

  ‘This is what I hoped for from you, Fräulein Whittaker. Here we see what you are capable of. And why you will be the finest pianist that it’s been my pleasure to teach.’

  This shocks and thrills me. I can’t believe he’s saying this.

  The clock chimes twelve. My shoulders are aching, my whole body is aching. I’m desperate for a coffee.

  He sees me glance at the clock.

  ‘You must concentrate,’ he tells me. ‘It’s late, we haven’t got long.’

  I play the E major Etude. We work on the difficult middle section, the complex bravura harmonies.

  And then he says, ‘And now I would like you to play me the ‘Berceuse’, Fräulein Whittaker.’

  I open my music-case, pull out the music. I play it, this loveliest, tenderest of cradle-songs. Though this isn’t really my best playing; I’m exhausted, I’ve been concentrating for nearly three hours now.

  When I finish, I expect more teaching, more criticism. For him to pull my technique apart; to point out all my inadequacies. I remember what he told me all those weeks ago, when I first played this piece to him. There has to be stillness in it. Young people cannot be still. You have to find that stillness inside yourself. I remember how I felt like a child, when he said that.

  But he leans back in his chair and gives a little sigh.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. As though I have given him something. ‘Well, that’s all, my dear.’

  He has never called me ‘my dear’ before. There’s a tremor in the corner of my mind, like the flutter of a moth’s wing.

  I put my music away, close up my music-case. I may be tired, but Dr Zaslavsky looks far more exhausted than me. His face is the colour of ashes.

  ‘Remember all those things, Fräulein Whittaker. Will you do that for me?’

  His eyes on me. I used to feel that he had a young man’s eyes – ardent, passionate. You wouldn’t think that today. His eyes are weary, and his voice is thin, an old man’s voice.

  ‘Yes, I will, of course I will. Thank you so much for the lesson.’

  He makes a slight gesture, opening out his hands. As though to say this was nothing – that the pleasure was his.

  ‘So – I’ll be seeing you on Thursday at the Academy?’ I ask him.

  He murmurs something I can’t quite catch.

  I’m left unsure where I stand – not knowing whether I should still turn up on Thursday. I’ll find out later. For now, I’m tired and hungry and eager to leave. I long for a coffee and a cigarette.

  He brings me my coat and my hat, and helps me into my coat. He takes me through to his hallway. As he opens his door, the sound slams into us – the roaring of the massed engines of the Wehrmacht. You can smell and taste the petrol fumes on the air. Neither of us makes any comment. He stands there for a moment; I can sense his eyes, how they follow me, as I walk towards the street.

  When I come to the pavement, I turn to wave, but he has closed the door.

  67

  At Währingerstrasse I cross as before, by catching a soldier’s eye.

  I’d like to find a café, but none of them seem to be open. I walk briskly back towards Maria-Treu-Gasse, all the music I played him singing on in my mind. I realise I’m cold, almost shivering with tiredness, after so much concentration. I reach to my neck to tuck the scarf more closely about me; then realise I don’t have it. I remember taking it off with my coat before my lesson, that I then gave it to Dr Zaslavsky. I must have left it behind at his flat.

  I consider leaving it there. But it was my mother’s, I’d hate to lose it, and I’m only halfway home. I could be back at his flat in fifteen minutes. I turn, retrace my steps to Türkenstrasse, feeling rather cross with myself that I have to do this, that I’ve been so careless.

  I reach the apartment building, walk in under the arch. I’m putting out my hand to the bell, when I see that Dr Zaslavsky has left his door ajar. This puzzles me. Why would he do this, even for a moment, with the city in such chaos and so many treasures inside?

  I ring. He doesn’t come. I ring again, wait for a long time. There’s no sound at all from his apartment. Perhaps he’s gone out for lunch, and forgotten to lock his door. Yes, I’m sure that’s what has happened.

  My scarf will probably still be on the hat stand in the hall. I decide I will go in, take it, call out for him. There’d be no harm in doing that, surely. If he isn’t there, I will close the front door behind me; and then at least his flat will be secure.

  I push the door open, go in.

  ‘Dr Zaslavsky! It’s me, Stella Whittaker.’ My voice has an echoey sound.

  He doesn’t answer.

  The scarf isn’t on the hatstand. I feel uneasy, standing there. The apartment is utterly still. He has definitely gone out; there’s a sense of absolute absence.

  I go into the drawing room. The scarf is lying on the sofa, where he must have dropped it when he was helping me into my coat. I wrap it round me.

  As I stand there by the piano, I think back over the lesson. And thinking back, I hear Dr Zaslavsky’s words in my mind.

  You should linger over these phrases, Fräulein Whittaker. You should hold onto the music as though you can’t bear to let go…

  I feel the beginnings of fear. Just a little thing – a slight chill, a thin cold finger that inches down
the back of my neck.

  I suddenly can’t bear the stillness of the place. There’s no sound but the clear, unhurried tick of the clock; no movement but a slightly moving shadow on the floor of the room – a shadow that reaches through the open door from the hall. Moving back and forward, back and forward, just a very small movement. But why is this shadow moving at all, if there is nobody here?

  I leave the drawing room, glance along the length of the hall.

  He is hanging from the light fitment. He has hung himself with what looks like a dressing-gown cord. I know at once he is dead, from his glazed, protuberant, bloodshot eyes and the terrible purple mask of his face, from the way his swollen tongue sticks out of his mouth; from the absolute quiet of death that surrounds him. The chair that he must have kicked away is lying sprawled on the floor. This happened so recently – he is still moving very slightly. I think with horror how the violence would be held in the cord, the convulsion of the moment of death: it would take a long time to fade. One of his shoes has fallen off, and I see that his sock has holes in. This little detail seems too intimate, brings a sob to my throat.

  And then I find myself doubling over, gasping for breath, a wave of nausea surging through me. I run into his bathroom and vomit into the sink. When at last the retching stops, I wash out the sink, wash my face. I stand there for a moment, helpless, unable to move.

  I think of his gift to me, of those final hours of his life. In my head, I can still hear the last piece I played, the Chopin ‘Berceuse’. Was it also playing in his head as he died? Was that why he asked me to play it? Was that what he chose to hear, as he felt death rush towards him – this tenderest of cradle-songs, singing on in his mind?

  I go out into the hallway again. I feel paralysed: my mind won’t work. I don’t know what I should do. I can’t reach him, can’t cut him down.

  I go to the door of the flat – understanding now why he left it open; he wouldn’t have wanted to risk that people might have to break down the door. He would have hated such destructiveness, this man who loved beauty and order. Maybe he felt that there was already too much destroyed in the world.

  I find the caretaker’s flat and ring the bell; no one comes.

  There’s another flat on the ground floor. I ring; a woman answers. She has trim white hair, a pensive, grey gaze.

  ‘Dr Zaslavsky, who lives in number two,’ I say. Then can’t say more. My mouth is like blotting paper.

  ‘Yes, I know him,’ she says.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  She shakes her head sadly. But I can tell this doesn’t surprise her.

  ‘He didn’t look well. He never looked well. Not in these last few years.’

  ‘The thing is – he’s killed himself,’ I tell her. The words seem to catch in my throat.

  Her eyes widen.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says.

  ‘I couldn’t cut him down, he’s too heavy for me,’ I tell her. ‘It’s too difficult. I don’t know what to do. I just left him.’

  ‘Poor you, to find him,’ she says. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you one of his pupils?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I was.’

  The sadness of that past tense washes through me.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘You poor little thing, you’re far too young for all this…’

  Tears spill down my face. I wipe them away with the back of my hand.

  She looks at me, rather helplessly.

  ‘Perhaps I could get you a drink of water?’ she says.

  ‘No, I’m all right, really … But I suppose we should call the police or something,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she tells me. ‘You just go back home and try not to think about it. But you probably ought to leave me your details. Just in case the police want to speak to you.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Though with everything that’s happening…’ She gestures in the direction of Währingerstrasse. ‘Well, I don’t suppose they’ll be all that bothered, frankly,’ she says.

  ‘Thank you…’

  She finds me a scrap of paper, and I write out my name and address. I’m so grateful for her kindness.

  ‘He was a wonderful musician, Dr Zaslavsky,’ she says. ‘I used to hear him playing, before his arthritis set in.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he was.’

  Her eyes are on me, the colour of smoke, rather kind. I know she wants to give me comfort.

  ‘They say there’s music in Heaven, don’t they? We’ll have to hope that’s true. For Dr Zaslavsky’s sake,’ she says.

  I nod. If I try to speak, I will just start crying again.

  68

  Back in the flat on Maria-Treu-Gasse, I can’t face anyone. I sit in my room and think about Dr Zaslavsky. I can’t see beyond the image that is branded into my mind – my teacher hanging in his hallway. His bloodshot eyes; the purple mask of his face; the way he was still moving very slightly.

  I remember what he told me – how the piece should feel like a whole, so the ending would come at just the right time. But it didn’t, I think: there was nothing right about the timing of this ending. He shouldn’t have died – not when there was still so much he had to offer. He shouldn’t have died – and in such a sad and terrible way.

  I long for Harri: only his touch will console me, and soothe the sadness I feel. I yearn to see him. But I know I’ll have to wait till tonight; he’ll still be busy at the hospital, tidying everything up, making sure his patients will be well cared for when he is gone.

  At last, I realise I have to eat. It’s late, and lunch will be cleared away. I go to the kitchen.

  Janika takes one look at my face. Her eyes widen. She reaches out to put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Fräulein Stella. What on earth’s happened?’

  I tell her.

  ‘Oh, you poor poor girl, that’s so sad. And what a shock for you, to find him. He was a Jew, was he, your teacher?’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘I’ve heard of other suicides,’ she tells me. ‘Jewish people, who felt they couldn’t live with what was happening. That it was better to end it now, before things got any worse. And I’ve heard that they’ve started arresting people. People who haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Arresting people? But – they’ve only just got here.’

  ‘The SS are said to be very efficient,’ she says bleakly.

  ‘The SS? They’re here already?’

  She nods.

  ‘Now, have you eaten?’ she says.

  ‘No. I was wondering…’

  She puts cold meat and cheese and bread out on the table for me.

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of chocolate. It’s good for shock,’ she says.

  ‘Thank you, Janika. That’s lovely of you.’

  I watch as she breaks up the chocolate and melts it in a pan. She’s moving slowly, heavily, like someone wading through deep water.

  ‘So, what will you do now?’ she asks me. ‘Will you stay in Vienna?’

  Her question startles me.

  ‘Oh. I hadn’t really thought…’

  It’s only in this moment that I realise what it means for me, that Dr Zaslavsky has killed himself. My teacher is dead, my piano lessons are over; there is nothing now to keep me in Vienna.

  Suddenly, it’s so simple. I know exactly what I am going to do. I shall join Harri in his new life. There’s no decision to make – just the absolute certainty, that this will be my path. I don’t know how to do it, what it involves – don’t know how soon I’ll be able to leave, what papers I’ll need, any of that. I know I won’t be able to go with him on Monday: his flight will be all booked up with people fleeing the city. But somehow or other, I shall do this. The tragedy of my teacher’s death has made my way plain before me. When I see him this evening, to bid him goodbye, this is what I shall say.

  ‘Actually, I’m leaving Vienna. I’m going to go to Bal
timore. In America,’ I tell her.

  Already I feel a little stronger. America. The word tastes so good in my mouth.

  69

  Sunday evening. I put on his favourite dress, the cornflower crêpe, and the pretty bird pendant he gave me, so when we are parted he can picture me looking my best. Night is falling as I hurry round to Mariahilferstrasse.

  The city is quieter, but has a restless, uneasy feel. There are German army lorries pulled up here and there on the streets. A warplane flies over. The gangs are out again, though far fewer of them than yesterday. I pass a Jewish shop that has a broken window: young men are climbing out of the window with armfuls of clothes. In Piaristengasse, a gang of men have surrounded someone on the pavement. I hear their jeering, the sound of a fist hitting flesh. There’s nothing I can do. I cross to the other side of the street.

  My head is full of words, all tumbling over one another – all the things I want to tell him. That I will join him just as soon as it can be arranged; I will follow him to America, marry him there. I think how happy he will be, to hear that. I’m yearning to see him, to touch him; I long for his comfort, his warmth. After everything that’s happened, I feel so brittle – like a cello string wound too tight, that might suddenly break.

  At the toy shop, the lights are off in the window. The door to the stairway is open. I go up the stairs, and knock at Harri’s door.

  I wait for a long time. Then at last, to my relief, I hear steps approaching the door. I’m longing to press my face into his, to put my arms all around him.

  The door opens. It’s isn’t Harri, it’s Eva. I’m a little surprised; I’d have thought he would have been listening out for me. In the dim light of her hallway, her face is white as wax.

  For a moment she just stands there, as though the sight of me confuses her.

  ‘Stella. Come in,’ she says then.

  I follow her into the flat. The living room is empty.